


time travel (it's been getting me down)

by nateheywood



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV) Season 2, Fix-It, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Healing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Team Bonding, Temporary Character Death, The Oculus Fuckery, Time Travel Fix-It, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, pre-zari (sorry guys)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29365008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nateheywood/pseuds/nateheywood
Summary: Mick’s been… Mick’s been trying to move on, he really has.The fact that he's been hallucinating his dead husband for the past several months is making it hard, though.Or, Mick starts finding little pieces of Len on missions. His watch in the pocket of a bartender in the American West. His ring on a dead soldier. As he accumulates more and more of his husband, Mick starts to allow himself to hope again. To hope that, with enough pieces, he can put Len back together again.
Relationships: Mick Rory & Team Legends, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, Ray Palmer & Mick Rory, Sara Lance & Leonard Snart, Sara Lance & Mick Rory
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	time travel (it's been getting me down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beware_The_Ravenstag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beware_The_Ravenstag/gifts).



> Hi! I wrote this in... 2018, I think? And wanted to put in some scenes that I never did. So, here's the original version! This was one of the first things I wrote for this fandom and it holds a very special place in my heart - I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> gifting this to rachel bc she was my biggest supporter in this AS WELL AS acted as beta and i love her so much <3

Mick’s been… Mick’s been trying to move on, he really has.

It all comes to a halt when Len says something that ruins any chance of Mick living a life without him.

It’s a hallucination, one of the ones that puts Len under the covers with him. Sometimes he’s awake and facing Mick, examining him with those striking eyes; sometimes he’s asleep, and Mick watches his husband’s back rise and fall with breaths he isn’t taking anymore. He finds it’s better to leave the hallucination alone, because trying to speak to him or hold him (he did this only once, longing to curl around Len so badly that he couldn’t talk himself out of trying) would make him vanish.

He’s always found it easier to sleep with Len in the bed with him.

In  _ this  _ hallucination, however, Len is lying on his stomach, one arm under his pillow, and staring directly at Mick, the two of them almost nose-to-nose. Mick is still, unnaturally so, because he hasn’t managed to hallucinate Len’s sleeping position so perfectly before, and the expression on Len’s face is one that Mick saw so very rarely in real life, much less in his hallucinations.

Len looks calm, almost serene, and so  _ open  _ that Mick is having a hard time keeping a lid on his emotions.

They stare at each other for a long while, silent, and for long enough that Mick figures that Len isn’t going to speak tonight, and Mick’s mind has just put him there to help him get to sleep. 

Just as he shuts his eyes, resigned, Len speaks.

“Mick.”

It’s so soft, almost a whisper, and Mick can feel a lump of tears gather in his throat despite himself, because he hasn’t hallucinated  _ this  _ yet, hasn’t fallen back into the nights when he and Len would open up to each other and whisper things they were too afraid to say in the light into each other’s skin. They hadn’t had a moment like this since  _ Chronos,  _ both too skittish to truly open up. They’d been working through it, though, Len’s smirks softening slightly into smiles and Mick feeling brave enough to touch Len again, before Len had--

“You have to live.”

Mick gasps at the words, eyes snapping open as tears start to well up. The sentence feels like a knife in his gut, and he frantically meets Len’s eyes, finding that same strange serenity. 

“Lenny, Lenny, I don’t - I don’t know how to do this without you.” He sounds desperate because he is, and there’s nothing to hide from a hallucination.

There’s a pause, something that Mick recognizes as Len gathering his thoughts, and he finds himself waiting patiently before he shakes himself out of it. This isn’t real. He’s waiting on  _ himself _ to come up with something to say. He tries to focus on the fact that he can’t feel Len’s breath against his face, despite their closeness, and how he can’t feel the weight of Len on the bed. This isn’t real.

God, this hallucination thing has got him fucked up.

Len yanks him out of his thoughts once again, despite being one of said thoughts. “I learned a secret.” He’s still whispering, a rare, small smile on his face, self satisfied, and Mick didn’t think that his heart could break anymore, but  _ fuck  _ was he wrong. “There  _ is  _ no ‘without’. I’m not gone, Mick. I’m scattered into so many pieces. Sprinkled into your life like new snow.”

Mick can hardly breath, can hardly look at him. He gives in to the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, willing the hallucination to go away and leave him to his insomnia in peace. Sure enough, when he opens them again, Len is gone.

Still. Something was - something was  _ different. _

...

“Gideon,” Mick says that morning, after a while of sitting in bed and contemplating. “Did you notice anything weird last night?”

“I did notice a drop in temperature, Mr. Rory, but I adjusted accordingly. There were also small waves in the timeline, but as they caused no aberrations, I did not feel the need to alert the captain.”

Mick, despite himself, feels a spark of hope. The temperature had dropped, and Gideon made it sound like she hadn’t been the one to lower it. That doesn’t happen. Gideon controls everything with extreme regularity. 

“What about the night before?” he asks. It had been a night where Len had just slept, back to back with Mick. 

Mick both loves and despises those nights.

“Nothing unusual.”

Mick pulls himself out of bed, feeling motivated for the first time in a long time. He needs to get to the professor, he might have some sort of--

“Mick!” Sara’s voice suddenly burst out over the intercoms, the panic in it making Mick perk up. “Get your ass to the controls! We’ve got a level nine aberration!”

...

They end up in the Wild West. Again.

Mick opts to stay on the ship once they figure out that really only Ray and Firestorm need to be out there, and eventually ventures out to a bar once he tires of waiting for Stein to come back to talk about his hallucinations and their odd behaviors.

He walks into the saloon and sits heavily at the bar, motioning for a whiskey. The bartender turns towards him as he slides the glass over, hardly glancing at him, and a gleam of silver catches Mick’s eye. He freezes.

The bartender has a pocket watch, the chain stretching across his waistcoat, and Mick can’t stop staring at it. He’s reminded suddenly of Len and his pocket watch, one of their first scores, taken from the Western collection at the Central City Museum of Art and Archaeology. He’d taken that watch everywhere, his favorite amongst his collection of watches and clocks, and had flicked it open and shut when he was deep in thought. 

He thinks, vaguely, that it would be ironic if he steals this for his own comfort and it turns out to be the watch they’d stolen, ruining any sort of sentiment attached to it. It would probably create some sort of time loop, because he wouldn’t steal it if he didn’t care, but he would care if he didn’t steal it, and so on and so forth.

Mick lifts it off the guy anyway.

Mick tells himself that it isn’t Len’s watch, that he hasn’t fucked with time somehow. He tells himself that he remembers the date on the watch being later that 1867, and even if it wasn’t, that the museum collection will still have a pocket watch in the future that Len will steal and stabilize the timeline.

He ignores the weight in his pocket until that night, hunkering down in his room while the rest of the team hits up the bar he’d been in hours ago. Sara had given him a look when he announced that he was going to bed instead of joining them, but nobody else protested. Mick tries to tell himself that it doesn’t sting.

He sits down on the edge of his bed, yanking off his gloves and tugging the watch out of his pocket by the chain. He traces the leaves printed on the cover, fingers trembling, and realizes that it’s the same pattern that was on Len’s. 

He turns it in his hands, frowning at the small dent on the side. He’s pretty sure Len’s watch had that same dent, but he’s also pretty sure that Len had put it there himself, when he’d flung it down an alleyway to lead the cops on their tail astray. Doing that had also--

He pops it open, and sucks in a breath at the crack stretching across the glass face of the watch, the second hand twitching slightly before moving on to the next second. His hands are definitely shaking as he raises it closer to his face, mapping out the hairline fractures stemming from the sides of the main break with his eyes.

“I’ve been looking for that,” Len drawls, and his voice is so close to Mick’s ear that goosebumps raise on his arms and he shivers. “Thanks for finding it for me.”

“This isn’t yours,” Mick growls. “That’s impossible.”

“Oh yeah?” Len shoots back, breath ghosting along the back of Mick’s neck and making him shiver again. “Wanna explain the crack? The dent?”

Mick closes the pocket watch sharply, suddenly done with looking at the face. “Wanna explain it being in 1867, smart-ass?”

Rather than bestowing Mick with an answer, Len blows in his ear.

Mick raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “You’re really--”

Wait. 

He whips around to face Len, who is a _ hallucination,  _ to find him kneeling on the bed behind Mick.

“Do it again,” Mick demands.

Len blows in his face, and Mick can  _ feel  _ it, can feel cool air run across his face and can smell a faint hint of mint from Len’s toothpaste. 

Mick’s heart is beating at a million miles a minute, and he has to shut his eyes in an attempt to gain back a small sense of control. When he opens them again, Len is gone.

Mick stands and barely refrains from smashing the pocket watch into the ground, opting instead to kick at his nightstand, pouring all of the frustration and heartbreak he’s been feeling for the past year into it. By the time he stops, he’s kicked enough times that he’s dented the metal. 

“Dammit,” he mutters, kneeling down and pulling at the bottom drawer. The dent prevents it from opening, no matter how hard he jiggles it. He growls and kicks it one more time before pulling off his boots and climbing into bed, pocket watch still in his fist.

He wakes up curled around Len’s pillow, despite the fact that it doesn’t smell like him anymore.

He does not cry. He  _ doesn’t. _

...

Sara decides that they all need a break after the Wild West mission, and despite the fact that it’s Ray who got shot and Firestorm that crash landed from sixty feet up, she looks at Mick and the bags under his eyes when she says it. Mick remains expressionless even as she tries to coax him out with a small smile.

She thinks she knows what it’s like, because of Laurel. She probably  _ does,  _ Mick is willing to admit, but a sister is different than a partner, a  _ husband.  _

He’s never been big on comfort anyway, even from Len. 

They stop at a beach in California a few weeks later, landing sometime in the 1300’s to make sure that they have the beach all to themselves. Ray tries to talk to him as they all walk out of the ship, babbling something about sunscreen and cancer as he shoves a bottle of the stuff in Mick’s hands, but there’s a look of pity in his eyes that Mick doesn’t appreciate.

“Don’t want to get burned!” Ray chirps, sounding a little too much like a dad with a minivan.

“A little late for that,” Mick says gruffly, fully expecting the look of guilt Ray gets as he eyes the burn scars on Mick’s arms and chest, exposed under the wife beater he’s wearing.

He’s expecting him to back off in embarrassment when Ray visibly steels himself and says, “Scars get sunburned more easily.”

Mick is too taken aback to say anything, and Ray must get a sense of how daring he’d been because he jogs a little to catch up with Nate, leaving Mick to stare at his back in wonder. 

Reluctantly, he puts on the sunscreen.

A few minutes later, Ray, Nate, and Jax are all playing in the surf, leaving Sara to sunbathe and Amaya and Stein to read their novels under the gigantic umbrella that Gideon had manifested for the occasion. Mick stands just slightly behind them, unsure. Amaya inclines her head from him to the empty seat next to her, and he makes up his mind, not eager to be in the company of three out of the four people who think they can talk to him about his feelings.

“I’m going for a walk,” he says, and starts walking before anyone can protest.  _ If _ they even would have - they were probably relieved.

He walks along the edge of the water, letting his mind go blank. It’s a relief, to just listen to the sound of the seagulls and the waves without his mind whirring about Len and his hallucinations. He’s been too afraid to approach Stein about his hallucinations after that night with Len and his breath, too afraid that he’ll only confirm that Mick has actually gone insane with grief.

He’s half expecting Len to appear at his side, to start walking along beside him silently as he thinks, when he sees the rock about five feet in front of him. The tension that he holds transfers from being because he was expecting a hallucination, to the familiarity of the rock.

“Not possible,” he says under his breath, marching forward and picking up the rock. He looks at it. And looks at it and looks at it.

He’s not fascinated because of its beauty or potential value, pink and purple crystals glittering in the center attractively. What he can’t can’t take his eyes off of are the small letters sloppily printed on the back in sharpie.

_ TO: LENNY _

_ FROM: LISA _

_ HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! _

There are small stars and hearts drawn around the “happy birthday”, and Mick can’t stop staring at them. He remembers when Lisa had given this to Len, remembers when she had dragged Mick into her room while Len was moping at some bar because “Lise is hiding something from me, Mick, from  _ me”,  _ giggling with pleasure and excitement as she pulled the thing from out under her pillow. 

“He’s gonna love it,” she’d said. “I didn’t even steal it! I found it, by Mary’s house.”

Mick had agreed with her, smiling as he fingered the ring in his pocket. He hoped Len liked the present he got for him, too.

They’d been in California at the time.

Mick almost wants to drop it, leave it in the sand, feeling like he was holding some haunted object, something so tied to a happier time in his life that the misery he’s in right now seems that much heavier.

He puts it in his pocket instead, Len’s words echoing in his mind.

_ I’m scattered into so many pieces. _

...

Len gets into bed with Mick that night, climbing in under the covers instead of just appearing there as he usually does. He can feel the bed bend and bounce as Len gets himself situated, and he actually bounces in the aftershock of Len finally settling in front of Mick. They’re almost nose-to-nose, an almost recreation of the night this all started, and Mick itches to touch Len. He doesn’t, because he doesn’t think he can take the sight of his hand passing through Len’s head, not again, not when he can almost pretend this is real.

“I’m tired, Mick,” Len says, and Mick is overwhelmed by the feeling of breath on his face, by the feeling of Len’s weight in the bed. “I’m tired of being ripped apart over and over again.”

Mick just stares, and Len sighs. “Go to sleep, Mick,” he huffs, and it’s almost sweet until he adds, “You’re no use to me when you’re sleep deprived.”

Mick’s just irritated enough to shoot back, “And who’s fault is that?”

“It’s mine, I know,” Len says levelly, sounding annoyed. “Go to sleep.”

He and Mick stare each other down for longer than they should, until Mick finally relents and shuts his eyes. He tries to ease himself into sleep by focusing on the familiar annoyance that comes with bickering with Len rather than the impossible dip in the bed where his husband’s hallucination lies, but it’s ultimately the latter that allows him to sleep.

He’s always slept better with his husband in bed.

...

Their next stop is 1585, France, because some asshole had been dropped there from 2015 and decided to run around in his neon orange sweatshirt and brand new iPhone rather than attempt to blend in.

They’re busy engaging in a small tussle with the Time Bureau and a group of witch hunters when Ray pipes up over the comms, sounding so confused that Mick wants to laugh at him without even knowing the context.

“Uh, guys?” The familiar sound of wind whipping around tells them that Ray’s up in the air somewhere, probably trying to determine the best place to shoot. “I found something?”

“Where?” Firestorm asks, and they must fly over to wherever Ray is, because a few minutes later there’s a “what the  _ fuck, _ ” that was probably followed by a string of admonishments from Stein. 

Mick rolls his eyes at them, too focused on roasting some dumbass with a pitchfork to really care about whatever new thing they’re nerding about, but Sara doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment.

“Well?” she says, voice strained as she brings a man twice as big as her to the floor. She stands, tossing her hair back from her face and scowling. “What is it?”

“It has to be the kid’s,” Firestorm says, referring to the seventeen year old that had started this mess and completely ignoring Sara. “There’s no way--”

“But what if it  _ is, _ ” Ray says, sounding strangely hopeful. “What if somehow the Oculus--”

Mick freezes.

“ _ Guys _ !” Nate snaps, probably annoyed at being left out of the nerd conference. Mick continues to shoot at opponents, trying to ignore the shakiness of his hands and giving the comms as much attention as he can spare.

“It’s a parka,” Firestorm says, sounding unsure.

“It’s  _ Snart’s  _ parka,” Ray corrects, and Mick’s adrenaline goes into overdrive. 

He can see where Ray is hovering around fifty feet away, and the only thing keeping him from racing towards him are the five opponents that currently surround him. He launches himself into the battle with a ferocity that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

He finishes blasting another pilgrim and knocks the Bureau member that Amaya’s engaged with with the butt of his gun, and grabs another in one smooth move. He cracks this one in the face with his fist and finishes it with a pound to the top of her head with the gun. Amaya joins his side, and he doesn’t think about anything but the battle until the Legends are the only ones left standing, the unconscious bodies of their opponents scattered around the field. When his eyes meet Sara’s, he sees a shock there that he can feel in his whole body.

“Bring the parka here,” Sara says, tearing her gaze away from Mick’s. Ray touches down almost immediately, a familiar navy bundle in his hands. Mick makes an aborted move to grab it but holds himself back - he can’t let himself be seen as weak as he really is by the team. He doesn’t want any more of the pitying stares Ray shoots him daily.

Sara feels it, rubs the fur of the hood between her fingers, and has the nerve to look  _ sad  _ before skepticism covers it up. “We’ll have Gideon scan it to make sure.”

The entire team eagerly follows as Ray marches into the Waverider, even Nate and Amaya, although they look confused. Mick trails in the back, trying to ignore the irony of feeling like an outsider when it’s  _ his _ husband’s coat that everyone is focused on. 

They all crowd into the lab as Ray sets the parka on the table, gently, as if it could crumble in his hands. Mick feels a flash of irritation that only grows as he takes in the grief on Sara and Ray’s faces, the sorrow coloring Jax and Stein’s as they separate. Where the hell was this in the days after Len’s death? Where was it when they all got back together, or when they went to the Vanishing Point, where Len had  _ died? _

“Gideon, who’s parka is this?” Ray says, the same hope Mick had heard over the comms painted all over his face. Mick tries to reign in his anger, even as he tries to ignore the mixed feelings over whether this  _ is  _ Len’s coat or not. They seem to be battling each other as much as feeding off of one another, and it’s just making him angrier.

“It belongs to Mr. Snart,” Gideon says, and the entire team freezes in shock.

“When is it from?” Sara demands as she runs a hand through her hair, looking more caught off guard than Mick has ever seen her. “How did it get here?”

“2016,” Gideon says, the warmth and cheer in her voice out of place. “I am unsure of how it got here.”

Mick is numb, unfeeling, until he sees tears in Ray’s eyes and anger floods into his system like a breath of fresh air. He grabs onto the anger, relishing in the feeling of power it gives him after months of grief and guilt consuming him.

“What the hell is this?” he growls, gesturing at Ray’s tears and then more broadly to the rest of the group. He marches forwards and snatches the parka from the table, trying and failing to keep himself from holding it tight to his chest. “Why the hell are you all cryin’ about this  _ now _ ?”

Ray just looks confused, and while before it might have softened him, Mick doesn’t give a fuck about his confusion now. “None of you gave a rat’s ass when he sacrificed himself for us,” he yells, and he grips the parka tighter. “ _ Now _ you feel like grieving?”

Ray is opening and closing his mouth, looking lost for words. Stein and Sara look offended, and Jax just looks guilty. Mick growls and turns around after a few moments, upset that none of them are saying anything. He walks out of the room without another word, wrestling with his anger before he says anything actually damaging.

He’s halfway to his room when Ray’s voice down the hall calls out to him. 

“Mick!”

He stops and turns around to find Ray jogging up to him. Sara, Stein, and Jax are all clustered at the end of the hall, watching. Nate and Amaya are nowhere to be seen. Ray stops just a little too close for comfort, but Mick lets him be. He’s surprised a hallucination of Len doesn’t pop up to tease him for being soft right then and there.

“Mick,” Ray says again when Mick doesn’t say anything, slightly out of breath and holding Mick’s gaze confidently. “I’m sorry that you think we didn’t grieve. And I’m sorry that we haven’t been there for you as you work through yours.” Stein opens his mouth to protest, but Jax shakes his head at him. “But we did grieve. After we got Savage, we all got together at a bar every night for about a week before Sara and I had to go back to Star City. We toasted to him every night and traded stories about him with each other. You never bothered to show up, even though we invited you.” 

Mick remembers the texts, but he’d figured they were sent out of obligation, not out of a true desire to hang out with him. 

“Which is a pity, because I’m sure you have some great stories about him. We all got close with him, Mick.” Ray looks earnest, eyes wide and comforting. “Or at least somewhat. We  _ did _ live on the same ship for nearly a year. We miss him too. But, what I’m  _ really _ curious about is why you didn’t seem very surprised when Gideon said that the parka was Snart’s.”

Mick debates on not telling him. Thinks about just turning around and continuing on to his room, and trying to figure out what’s been going on with Len and the timeline ever since that night. 

“I’ve been having hallucinations,” Mick starts, and Stein’s nod of encouragement helps more than Mick is willing to admit. He goes through the night that Len’s hallucination had seemed strange, glossing over everything but the bare bones of the conversation, and tells them all about the watch and the rock, and how the parka just seems to be the latest in such events. He doesn’t tell them about how Len seemed to be more real each time he saw him, more solid:  _ he  _ isn’t even sure that that’s what’s been happening, and he isn’t looking to be accused of insanity until he knows for sure.

Sara doesn’t let them all sit in shocked silence when Mick finishes, and Ray and Stein begin speaking over each other with new theories and ideas once the “So how can we help?” finishes leaving her lips.

Mick just stands there and tries not to look as surprised as he feels.

...

After reluctantly handing over Len’s watch, the rock, and the parka to Ray and Stein to analyse and threatening to kick their asses if they damage anything, Mick goes straight to bed, so exhausted that he’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, which hasn’t happened to him. Ever. 

He dreams that he’s standing in some sort of a clothing store, in between two clearance racks bulging with winter coats and sweaters. He turns to find Len on the other side of one, sliding each hanger to the side as bitchily as he can, since he doesn’t want to be there, and is only there because Mick is forcing him to be.

Mick knows why he’s here, aware that he’s dreaming but also aware that he doesn’t have the control that he usually has when he knows he’s dreaming - this is a memory. It’s a memory of when he dragged Len to go and get an actual coat after one too many times of watching him shiver uncontrollably when using the cold gun, the charged core making the air around him twenty degrees or lower. He’d told Len that they were doing this because it made his aim shit, when in actuality he was tired of Len dragging him onto the couch or into bed after a job just to stick his frozen hands and feet all over Mick.

Mick watches as Len lifts a puffy blue parka off the rack, looking contemplative. 

“No,” Mick says, as Len looks at it.

“ _ No _ ,” Mick says again, as Len slides it off the hanger.

“It’s  _ fine,  _ Mick,” Len drawls, but he’s smirking as he shrugs it on, like he’s known all along that Mick would hate it and is choosing it in some fucked up form of revenge. Mick scowls.

“You look ridiculous,” he tells him, as Len pulls up the hood. The fur lining hangs in his eyes, and all Mick can really see is his nose and mouth. He very purposefully does not express his desire to kiss him like this, lest he encourage him.

“I like it,” Len says, pulling off the hood and narrowing his eyes at Mick. 

“You really think you’re going to intimidate the Flash with that on,” Mick says flatly, unimpressed. He only realizes that he’s made a grave mistake when Len lifts an eyebrow, a look in his eye that says he’s just accepted the challenge that Mick has unwittingly given him.

“Wait--” Mick says, but Len is already walking towards the cashier, and Mick remembers having to watch him  _ pay _ for it. With their  _ money _ .

Mick wakes to the jolt that comes with cold fingers flattening against his stomach, and he groans, still half asleep. “ _ Len, _ ” he growls, going to grab his husband’s wrists to pry him away. “Stop--” When all he grabs is his stomach, he jerks into hyper awareness and flips himself over to find Len lying close to him again, looking annoyed. His face softens when Mick tries to speak.

“Was that… did you really...?” Mick can’t finish the question, his voice barely coming out. He stares at Len, who just reaches out and touches his face. His touch, now that Mick is focused on it, doesn’t quite feel real: instead of the burning cold that usually came with Len’s icy fingers, it feels more like the aftermath of something cold touching you, a lingering sense of chill.

“Just let me warm my fingers on you,” Len whispers, eyes darting all around Mick’s face. “I’ve missed this.”

It’s  _ that,  _ that  _ confession,  _ that breaks the dam. 

Mick can’t stop the sob that bursts out of him, painful because he tries to hold it back. He tries to grab Len’s wrist again, this time for comfort, but Len pulls back before he can. “You can’t,” he says, his voice holding a misery he has no right to feel, not when he’s torturing Mick like this.

“Keep touching me, then,” Mick manages to snap through a second sob. Len frantically presses his hands to Mick’s face, palms cradling his cheeks. He has a strange expression on his face, one that holds both guilt and relief, as well as a tenderness only Mick and Lisa have ever gotten to see, to  _ experience _ .

Len stays for a few more minutes, before he leans in close and presses his lips to Mick’s. “Soon, Mick,” he whispers, and Mick relishes in the feeling of breath against his face. He’s gone as soon as Mick blinks, leaving him feeling like he’s just plunged his entire face in ice water.

He falls asleep with his face pressed into Len’s pillow, shoulders still shaking.

...

Mick knows this whole thing should be giving him hope. He knows that he should be jumping for joy at every item they unearth, like a little piece of the hole in his chest has finally returned. But, he isn’t, and it isn’t. He  _ is _ hopeful - which hurts. He feels the warmth of joy when they find something, but it’s immediately smothered by the heavy weight of grief, and it feels like he’s smashing a rock recklessly into an already cracked window.

His heart cracks a little more when they find the next item.

They’re in the 60’s, fixing something to do with Kennedy, and they head out to some woman’s house to interview her dressed as journalists, but not before Mick loudly complains about only doing anachronisms levels eight and above. They deserve a break. Maybe they could do a level two or something.

It’s him, Ray, and Amaya, the latter two because they’re the most trustworthy-looking out of the team, and him because he can case the joint for when they’ll inevitably break in later that night. He’s resigned to it, had even skipped the beer this morning to stay sharp, but he’s caught off guard as soon as they go to sit down in the woman’s living room.

He somehow manages not to freeze in the entrance way at the sight of the gray and black quilt draped over the woman’s white couch, and instead makes a beeline for it, already searching for the lump in the corner where Len had stowed an emergency wad of $1000 in hundreds. He isn’t at all surprised when he spots it.

He nabs it when they break in to grab the helmet from 2090, and he takes it back to his bedroom before Ray can ask for it, ignoring the expectant expression on the man’s face once they make it back onto the ship. He grumbles something about going to bed early and stomps down the hall, shutting the door behind him and sinking onto the bed, blanket held loosely in his hands as he tries not to lose himself in memory.

Mick’s been lost in memory a little too much these days, like all that avoidance in the first few months is biting him in the ass, the dream from the night they found Len’s parka the catalyst of them all. 

It had been a real problem, at first, when he tried to drown himself in booze like he’d done before. It seemed to cause hallucinations,  _ real _ hallucinations, because Len would just reenact memories or good times, act like nothing had happened since before Chronos, and Mick can’t take any more of those.

In a moment of weakness, Mick unfurls the blanket and wraps it around himself, sighing at the familiar weight. He feels the bump where the wad of cash sits, and doesn’t even bother to wonder how the woman hadn’t noticed it. They’d been young, when Len had done it, not quite experienced enough to know where to really stash their hard earned cash. In fact, Mick is pretty sure he’d gotten the idea from some history documentary that had been on the TV.

He remembers the night Len had sewn it in. Mick had woken up in the middle of the night, sometime around one or two in the morning, to an empty spot in the bed. He’d sighed, debated on whether to go back to sleep or not, and ultimately decided to get up and drag his newly husbanded Len back to bed from whatever plan that had been eating at him. He’d found him in the living room, the only light coming from the TV playing some old black and white movie, sitting on the couch with the blanket in his lap.

_ “What the hell are you doing out of bed?” Mick grumbles after a while of trying to puzzle out what Len is doing with a sewing kit. _

_ Len jumps a little, relaxing when he looks up to find Mick in the entrance way by the stairs. He smirks, holding up a wad of cash before slipping it inside of the little pocket he must have just sewn on. “Just in case our break doesn’t last as long as we want it to,” Len says as he sews it shut.  _

_ “Good thinking,” Mick admits, making sure the scowl still stays on his face. “Now get your ass back to bed.” _

_ “Whatever you say, Mick,” Len sighs, sounding for all the world uninterested, but he’s smiling as he stands up, needle and blanket forgotten, one of those real smiles that Lisa had told Mick to treasure all of those years ago, when he’d gotten his first one.  _

_ Len walks towards Mick until he’s right up in his face, leaning in close. “Any particular reason you want me in bed?” he asks, voice nearly a whisper. He kisses Mick before he can answer, and Mick runs his fingers over the soft buzz of Len’s hair, sinking into the contact. _

“I can’t believe you got the blanket back.”

Mick jumps, yanked out of his thoughts, and scowls at Len, who’s sitting next to him with that weird soft expression as he looks at the blanket in Mick’s hands. 

“Well, you always regretted leaving it at the Chicago house,” Mick says after he pulls himself together enough to reply.

“Losing that much money because I  _ forgot  _ is the worst crime I’ve ever committed,” Len drawls, smirking, and Mick actually manages to laugh.

“The break was worth it, though,” Len continues, drawl suddenly gone. 

“We needed it,” Mick rasps, and it’s like he’s forgotten how to talk. They’d never been much for talking, for comforting with words - it had always been physical affection, Mick petting Len’s hair or Len kissing Mick’s knuckles, Mick holding Len close to him and Len pressing kisses anywhere he could. But now? They can’t. They  _ have _ to talk it out. “Better than any honeymoon we could’a had.”

Len smiles, eyes soft, and Mick tries not to think too bitterly about the fact that it feels like he’s gotten more real smiles in the time that Len’s been - gone - than in their entire marriage. 

“Any progress?” Mick tries, heart beating faster, because this is the first time he’s acknowledged what’s happening in front of Len. Rather than answer, Len puts his hand on Mick’s forearm, wrapping his long fingers around his wrist. Mick sucks in a shuddering breath. 

They’re warm.

They still don’t feel quite real, more like when heat reaches your face after a long time of being numb from cold, but Mick still sighs into Len’s touch as he reaches up to his face. “Mick,” Len sighs, his hand traveling down Mick’s arm to place his hand in Mick’s open palm. Mick doesn’t move for fear of making Len disappear.

“I miss you,” Mick says desperately. “I need to know why this is happening. Tell me if this is all going to lead somewhere disappointing or not, because I can’t handle losing you again, I  _ can’t-- _ ”

“Say you love me,” Len says suddenly, seriously. Mick looks up, startled.

“What?”

“Say you love me,” Len repeats, and Mick couldn’t possibly tear his eyes away from Len’s hard gaze, his “if-you-don’t-take-this-job-seriously-I-will-kick-your-ass-husband-or-not” expression firmly in place. Mick hadn’t ever thought he would one day actually take it seriously. “I can’t promise you anything. Hopefully you do it right. I don’t know how to help you, Mick, but I need you to help  _ me. _ ”

Mick opens his mouth to tell him how selfish that is, wants to grab Len’s shoulders and shake him until he just comes  _ back,  _ damn it, but he doesn’t get a chance to because Len continues.

“Just, whatever you do, don’t stop. Don’t give up, Mick.” Len grabs his face with both hands, and Mick can tell it’s meant to be a firm hold by his expression and body language, but it only feels like two weak heaters are blowing on the sides of his face. “Please.”

He vanishes as soon as Mick blinks, and his “I love you” is said to nobody. 

...

“I think I’ve figured out a way to track Snart’s stuff throughout the timestream,” Ray says, after five solid minutes of knocking on Mick’s door and grinning at Mick’s best scowl when he finally opens the door. Despite himself, Mick feels the scowl fall off of his face.

“How?” he demands, and Ray just looks more excited.

“Follow me to the lab,” he says, before turning around and walking, trusting Mick to follow him. Mick feels a little flare of annoyance at the assumption, but it’s not nearly as strong as when they’d first gotten onto this ship, and he follows Ray.

“Alright, so,” Ray says, stepping up to a large screen. “I had Gideon scan most of the items,” Ray, very wisely, does not comment on the blanket, “and she, Stein, and I all developed a system based on Len’s unique time signature and the strange time signature on the objects, which Gideon can’t explain.” Ray falls silent as he presses a few buttons on the screen, and Mick refrains from snapping at him to hurry up. 

Mick’s heart leaps into his throat as the screen blooms to life, little blips of blue dotting a wispy graphic that probably represents time in some way. “And, voilà,” Ray says, grinning. He points to a blip much larger than the rest. “This big guy is the Waverider. There’s a collection of Len’s stuff here, so it reads as a much larger dot on the tracker.”

Mick spends a while studying it, counting the blips and knowing that he has to collect all of them, somehow. Somehow, this all leads to getting Len back, getting him back for  _ real,  _ so that he can touch him and hold him and  _ feel  _ him again. He ignores the lump of tears that presses at the back of his throat at the thought, and instead steels himself, ready to put any and all anachronisms on hold in the name of piecing his husband back together.

He turns to Ray, feeling suddenly awkward. “Haircut,” he says, gruffly. He can only hope he doesn’t sound as awkward as he feels. “Thanks.”

Ray beams, and Mick scowls. “No problem! That’s what family’s for.”

Mick, unsure of what to do next, pats Ray’s shoulder and grunts. They stand in awkward silence until Ray suggests that they go tell the others where they’re going next, and Mick agrees, grateful that at least Ray seems to understand that this is their mission now, and that the anachronisms can wait.

Mick is surprised when Sara doesn’t argue when he marches up to her and tells her that they’re going to China in 400 BC. Instead, she nods and shares a significant look with Jax, and Mick suddenly knows that they’ve been talking about him behind his back.

He bristles at the thought of it, of them discussing him and knowing about Ray’s tracker before he did, but decides it isn’t worth fighting about, not when they’re being so accommodating.

He goes to the kitchen to grab a beer. He doesn’t know what they’re going to find in China, and he isn’t sure he wants to be completely sober for it.

...

It’s the worst item so far.

Mick is the one to spot it, a gold gleam on the finger of one of the soldiers they’d just plowed through. It strikes him as something that they wouldn’t have in ancient China - it’s too shiny, somehow - and he kneels by the man’s unconscious body, slipping the ring off of his finger and examining it. Nothing about it is familiar or even unique, and he’s about to just throw it aside when he catches sight of an engraving on the inside of the ring, and he freezes.

_ Lewis and Penelope Snart, 1968 _

He envelops it in his fist, unconsciously squeezing it as if to crush it, trying to get a grip on his emotions before Sara, or  _ Ray,  _ God-forbid, comes over to see why he hasn’t risen from a crouch in five minutes.

He knows, he  _ knows  _ that Len’s parents and his mom dying and his dad being a piece of shit shaped a large part of who Len became, but acknowledging that this wedding ring, this little piece of jewelry bearing  _ Lewis Snart’s _ name, belongs in the pile of things time considers to be essential to Len is hard to swallow.

He sees Sara walking towards him and he shuts his thoughts down, reigning in his expression until he knows all she’ll see is a mean scowl. He fights hard not to shove the wedding ring into his pocket and out of sight - like the blanket, it feels too personal to share, although more attached to bad memories than a good one - and instead keeps it between his fingers, clearly visible. 

He wouldn’t have gotten away with hiding it for long, anyways. The team is here  _ because  _ they know that something of Len’s is lying around somewhere, and Mick isn’t about to make them search for hours for something that isn’t even there anymore.

“That it?” Sara says in lieu of greeting, nodding her head at his fist. He must not have steeled his expression well enough, because her hard expression softens once their gazes meet.

“Yeah,” he says shortly. He doesn’t offer anything else, which he assumes is a clear “don’t ask me any more questions”, but Sara makes it clear that she doesn’t give a shit, as Mick doesn’t doubt for a second that she can’t read his body language.

“What is it?” she asks, and Mick tenses. 

“His father’s wedding ring,” he says after a moment, because they’re going to find out anyway, with the pile of Len’s stuff having been transported from Mick’s nightstand to what’s become a sort of Len-shrine in the lab, where Ray and Stein can keep tabs on it. All that’s been happening are small, invisible-to-the-naked-eye time-jolts that Gideon reports whenever a new item comes aboard the Waverider, although they do seem to be getting stronger.

Sara looks taken aback, like Mick’s answer had come out of left field. “I thought it was  _ Len’s  _ wedding ring,” she says, once she gets over her surprise, and this time,  _ Mick  _ is the one taken off guard.

“You know I was married to him, right?” Mick asks, raising his eyebrows. Sara just raises hers in response. He sighs and takes his necklace out of his shirt, Len’s ring glinting in the sun in a way that makes it look like it’s made of ice. “Mine’s under this.” He wiggles his gloved fingers in Sara’s face in answer to her unspoken question.

“I thought it was from a job gone bad,” she says, studying Len’s ring from where it now rests on top of Mick’s shirt.

“It was,” Mick says, smiling honestly for the first time in what feels like years. “Decided he wanted it to mean something else, too.”

Sara smiles back at him, before her expression suddenly turns serious. “We’ll get him back, Mick,” she says, determined, but Mick feels his expression shut down before she can even finish her sentence.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he says, flatly, before walking past her towards the Waverider.

He can’t afford to feel the hope blossoming in his chest. He doesn’t know if he’ll survive if it shatters.

...

Mick is standing in the brig, and he’s staring at Len, who’s on the outside, looking frostily determined. Mick’s stomach does somersaults, nausea building up in his throat. He remembers this.

“Here’s my proposal,” Len says, standing outside of his cell. “I open this cell, and we let our fists do the talking.”

“When I kill you…” Mick growls, but it feels outside of him, detached. He remembers feeling so angry, hurt and betrayed when he’d seen Len for the first time since he’d been forced onto the Waverider as a prisoner, but he doesn’t feel anything right now, like some unfeeling spectator on his own life.

“You take the jump ship , make your escape, live out the rest of your life anywhere you like,” Len says, voice wavering, which isn’t  _ right.  _ Len is supposed to be calm, unreadable, desperate, Mick would later learn, to fix their relationship in any way he thought possible. He hadn’t been so openly afraid.

Mick hums, despite the twist of unease he feels in his gut. It’s as if he’s doomed to relive one of his worst memories and be unable to change anything as he reenacts one of his greatest regrets. “And if you kill me, well, it's better than being locked up in this place like some kind of circus freak,” he says, despite remembering thinking Len had no chance of that when this had all actually happened.

He hadn’t actually wanted to kill Len, to kill his  _ husband,  _ but the brainwashing had him all fucked over and confused and he’d been looking for an outlet. Maybe Len  _ had  _ been this afraid. Mick has never managed to remember his week in the cell very well, never wanted to, and maybe he’d just convinced himself that Len had been trying to do this as much as Mick had been.

“I take that as a yes,” Len says, but he isn’t determined, isn’t coming in with his fists ready to match Mick’s - he’s shaking, pale, body hunched over protectively as he enters Mick’s cell, ready for the fist that Mick can’t stop from happening.

The out of body feeling belongs here, at this part. Mick remembers feeling out of control, remembers feeling a strange detachment as he knocked Len onto his back, punches coming hard and fast--

The scene shifts, and Mick suddenly has control over his body again, going limp with relief to find Len standing in front of him, whole and in one piece. The team is celebrating in the room over, and Mick somehow knows that Len has just come back, that they have succeeded.

“Len,” Mick says desperately, reaching out, but Len sidesteps his reach, face unreadable.

“You think I’d let you touch me?” he sneers, posture stiff and guarded. “You think I came back for  _ you? _ ”

Mick is speechless, his heart dropping into his stomach as he takes a step forward and Len takes a step back.

“You think I still want you,” Len continues, voice colder than even when he spoke to his father. “After you betrayed us? After you threatened Lisa? After you  _ beat _ me?”

“I’m sorry,” Mick chokes out, holding back tears. “I’m  _ sorry,  _ Len, I’m sorry--”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Len says coldly, and suddenly they’re in the woods and the cold gun is charging up--

Mick wakes in a cold sweat, sheets damp and twisted around him, heart beating fast and wild. He turns his head to look at the other pillow and sees Len, looking worried and strangely faded. His hands are ice blocks on Mick’s face.

“I love you,” Len says, and that jolts Mick the rest of the way out of the nightmare. They only say that when it’s  _ important,  _ when it’s  _ necessary.  _ “It’s not your fault,” Len says. “It’s not your fault.”

He says it three more times, staring, flickering, ignoring any effort Mick makes to talk, before he blinks out of existence. 

Mick stares at the other side of the bed for a long, long time.

...

Mick starts to think about what he’s been referring to as “The 2046 Mess” a lot more. 

He knows he feels guilty about his betrayal and the time pirates, and he knows he feels guilty about Chronos, no matter what the others tell him, and about what he and Len did in the cell. He knows that he’s still angry at Len for leaving him in the woods, and knows he blames a tiny part of his brainwashing on him, no matter unfair that might be, or how hard he tries to crush that little bit of resentment.

He realizes that they need to talk it out. Realizes that he wants to forgive Len and needs him to apologize, realizes that he wants to apologize to Len and needs to hear his forgiveness.

He wonders if Len feels as guilty as he does. 

Scratch that - he  _ knows  _ Len feels as guilty as he does, knows his husband and how he would get after a fight. He’d either give Mick the cold shoulder or sulk around with guilt, and he definitely hadn’t been giving Mick the cold shoulder after their fight in the cell.

“You’d better come back,” Mick grumbles into his beer. He’s alone in the kitchen, no people or hallucinations to keep him company, but he pretends Len can hear him anyway. “We’ve got a lot of talkin’ to do.”

...

Mick hadn’t really thought about the pattern of Len appearing each night they found something, visions of Len walking or sleeping beside Mick silently aside, until it was broken.

They find Len’s copy of  _ Ender’s Game  _ in ancient Greece, the paper cover taped on and corners of it missing. Len’s name is printed in his thirteen year old scrawl, and Mick realizes that this is the first piece of Len that they’ve found that’s from before Mick had known him, before his father had gotten him landed in juvie.

Ray is the one to find it, and it’s fitting, because he almost orgasms over the damn thing.

“ _ Wow, _ ” he breathes over the comms. “This is from the original printing. Mick!” Ray whips around to face Mick as he enters the temple, beaten novel held reverently in his hands. “Did you know Len had the  _ original printing? _ ”

Mick rolls his eyes. He still maintains that Len would get along with Ray well, if he’d just get over his little jealous streak. A mutual fondness had even started between them before-- “Let’s go, Haircut.”

“How did he get this?” Ray asks as they leave the Temple of Athena. “Online? Did he get into a bidding war? Or did he just find it in a second hand bookstore, the owner unaware of what kind of treasure he has, the--”

“ _ Haircut, _ ” Mick snaps, because as much as he likes Ray, he doesn’t want to listen to him fantasize about finding an “original printing” of some sci-fi novel. Ray shuts up, and Mick grunts his appreciation. “He probably just bought it when it was first released.”

“What?”

“He was thirteen when he bought it,” Mick says, exasperated. “Got it in 1985.”

“Oh. Lucky bastard,” Ray mumbles, and Mick raises his eyebrows. “I was only six.”

“Benefits to being old,” Mick says, and then he has to listen to a string of apologies the rest of the way for calling Mick and Len “old”.

They go through the routine once they reach the ship: they place the item on the shrine, Gideon tells them that the time-jolt has gotten stronger, and the team celebrates while Mick slips into his room to get ahold of himself and Len drops in unexpectedly at a random time.

Except, Mick does stick around to have a beer, for once not wrapped up in melancholy thoughts and memories over the item, instead able to laugh and tell stories about Len as an awkward teenager visiting his family’s house, carefully avoiding why Len visited so often and what happened to his family.

They all go to bed late, or as late as one could be in the time stream, and Mick doesn’t realize he’s waiting for Len until he starts looking at the other side of the bed every five minutes after a full hour and a half of staring at the ceiling.

Len never comes. 

He doesn’t come for the next few items, and Mick finds his thoughts spiralling, his nightmares worsening, and no husband to curl into afterwards.

He doesn’t come when they find his beat up leather jacket in King Louis the XVI’s bedroom, or when they find his favorite record, a Frank Sinatra, with the little singed edge that Mick had put there during a fight, back before they’d gotten together. He remembers holding his lighter up to it, threatening, and watching Len completely wig out, drop to his knees,  _ beg  _ him to please, please don’t do it, I’ll do anything, just please don’t do it. Mick had dropped the thing like it hurt to touch, fell to his knees beside Len. It had taken an hour to coax him through enough breathing exercises to calm him down, guilt churning in his stomach as he tried to ward off his own panic attack.

Mick had told himself that he was just bluffing, that he wouldn’t have burned the record. Then, he wasn’t sure if that was true, and he still isn’t sure of how far he might have gone now. The singed edge of it had mocked him for the rest of the time they spent in that house, before they left it behind. Len had claimed he’d misplaced it as they were moving out, but Mick had found it in a last cursory sweep of the house, wedged between the refrigerator and the wall. 

Mick’s never asked about it, too afraid to remind Len of a time when he’d been so cruel. Now he’ll never get the chance.

He tries to kick away that mindset immediately. Of course he’ll get the chance. They aren’t traveling throughout time and space finding Len’s fucking purple rain boots for nothing. 

He tries very carefully to not think about how he still has no idea why the rain boots would be so special to be a piece of Len. He tries very carefully to not think that he’ll never get the chance to ask about that, either.

The fact that he still has things to learn about his husband makes him want to move faster, more efficiently, if only to see him that much sooner. It also brings out all of his insecurities, which had already been heightened by the 2046 Mess. It makes him feel untrustworthy, like he hadn’t been as important to Len as he likes to believe, like Len didn’t love him enough to tell him everything about him.

Logically, he knows it isn’t true. Knows that Len probably hasn’t thought about purple rain boots in years, given that they were smaller than even Sara’s feet. Knows that Len trusted him with his life, proved it almost too many times by risking life and limb because he trusted Mick to pull through. 

Mick remembers yelling at him about it, because he might not be able to come and save Len’s sorry ass every time, but Len had just rolled his eyes and said he trusted Mick, like  _ that _ had been the issue. It had taken that comment for Mick to realize that he  _ hadn’t  _ been worried that Len shouldn’t trust him: his concerns were more “what if I got captured or killed and couldn’t come and save you” rather than what they had been in the past: “you’re an idiot for trusting me because what if I decide to betray you” and the infamous “I don’t deserve your trust so stop giving it to me”.

Around the sixteenth item or so - who knew Len had so many components to him - Mick starts to wonder if he’s fucked it up somehow. 

He doesn’t give up. He  _ never  _ gives up. But he wonders if he’s seriously fucked up somewhere. He wonders if they’ve been collecting everything in the wrong order, somehow, or if he hasn’t been doing the right things with them. The worst of all is that he wonders if the end result of this thing, because there’s no denying that this is a  _ thing,  _ isn’t what they all thought it was.

He’d had a nightmare, last night. They had been following Gideon’s map of Len’s things, and landed in some pioneer town. Instead of a knick knack or clothing item, it was Len’s hand, still clutched around the knob he’d had to press down for the Oculus to self destruct, blackened with burns. He screamed, and the scene had flashed. They were finding a finger, then an organ, then a blue eye. Mick had woken up and immediately puked over the side of the bed.

He does, one day, actually talk about it with someone, unlike his other numerous issues with the entire situation. Those are for Len. He will talk about those with  _ Len,  _ because he is coming back.

“He hasn’t come back?” Ray asks him, after needling all of the background information out of Mick. It had been a very slow and painful process for both of them, but clearly it had been worth it for Ray.

Mick doesn’t answer him, instead draining the rest of his beer and getting up to grab another one. Ray sits at the table and looks like he wants to protest, but holds himself back. Smart. Mick would leave the kitchen if Ray tried to talk to him about his drinking.

“Maybe he just needs time to regroup,” Ray says when Mick sits back down. “Like maybe he has to pull himself together, too, like we’re collecting the pieces, but he’s the one putting the puzzle together.”

Mick nods, frowning. It kind of makes sense. “Alright,” he says, and this is probably the only time he’ll ever regret poking holes in Ray’s theories, “then why was he getting better all the nights before that?”

Jax had once referred to Len’s increasing tangibility as “getting better”, as if he were just on sick leave. It stuck, despite the fact that it pissed Mick off the first couple of times they all said it.

“I… I don’t know.” Ray looks physically pained to say the words. “Maybe he was trying to get you to realize? But, then he would have just told you outright--”

“Snart never told me anything outright,” Mick says, and for once, the idea doesn’t irritate him, “always tried to see what I could figure out for myself. Refused to tell me who the Flash was, said I had to find out for myself.” He chuckles at Ray’s expression.

“He knows who Ba--the Flash is?” Ray sputters.

“Had a deal with him and everything.” Mick leans forward, done with talking about the Flash. He’s had his own moments of jealousy. “How many items are left?”

Ray snaps out of his shock fairly quickly. “Three, I think.”

Mick’s heart lifts up. They’re so  _ close _ . “Then what are we waiting for?”

...

The last item is in Russia, 1897, somewhere in the palace of Czar Nicholas II. They miraculously get in without a struggle, their uniforms allowing them easy access for once in their lives, and immediately split up. They comb through the first floor of the palace, nothing catching anybody’s eye, and are about to head to the courtyard when Sara stops them.

“Wait,” she says slowly, and Mick pauses in the middle of some hallway. He barely remembers to straighten up like a palace guard when someone who looks like royalty sweeps past him without a glance. “There’s something on display here.”

A few seconds pass until Nate, who must have been close to her, speaks up. “Is that a  _ shiv? _ ”

“Where are you?” Mick says, trying to keep his breathing under control. He can practically see Len now. “What does it look like?”

There’s the sound of glass shattering, and Sara saying, “Meet us back on the ship. You’re not going to be able to get to the right room in time.”

“What if that’s not it?” Mick barks despite turning tail and heading towards the exit the Waverider is by.

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t have plastic toothbrushes in 1897, man,” Nate says.

Mick can’t help himself: he sprints the rest of the way to the ship.

The others arrive not longer after, having evidently ran themselves, and they all bustle into the lab, Sara telling Gideon to autopilot the fuck out of Russia before the guards start shooting at the Waverider as they go.

“Oh my God,” Nate says, and Mick can  _ see  _ him trying not to jump up and down. “Oh my God, oh my God! This is happening! We’re doing this! He’s gonna come back!”

“You might jinx it,” Ray hisses, and Mick steps between them, a little high-strung.

“Shut up!” he snaps, and then grabs the shiv from Sara. No way in Hell is he going to let her be the one to bring Len back. He goes to place it on the shrine, heart beating so fast it’s almost all he can hear, and hesitates. What if it doesn’t work? What if they didn’t get everything in the right order? Mick can guarantee that this shiv isn’t the most important thing about Len. He’d left it in prison for a reason.

“Mick?” Amaya says, and Mick makes himself put it down, right on top of Len’s parka.

Time  _ jolts,  _ the Waverider jerking to the side with the force of it. Mick feels his insides shake with it, and judging by the others’ expressions, they feel it too. The lights flicker, but ultimately stay on as everything stops vibrating.

They all blink, peering around the lab for someone Mick is suddenly too terrified to look for. He stares at the ground, prepared for a nasal “About  _ time,”  _ or a light hand on his shoulder to land at any moment. When nothing happens, Mick looks up, and their disappointed faces stare back at him.

“Gideon,” Sara says softly, eyes never leaving Mick’s face.

“I do not detect Mr. Snart anywhere on the ship, Captain,” Gideon says, voice too warm and cheery for what she’s saying.

Mick pretends like tears aren’t welling up in his eyes as he turns, walking out the door. “I need a drink,” he says.

“Mick--”

“ _ Alone. _ ”

He grabs a six pack and a bottle of vodka from the kitchen and takes it into his room, telling Gideon to not, under any circumstances, let anybody try to talk to him. He sits at the card table and cracks open the first beer. He’ll work his way up to the strong stuff.

By his third bottle, hallucination-Len appears.

He doesn’t know when he started thinking of the two as separate, but he’s almost positive that the Len that would visit him wasn’t a hallucination, at least not like this one is. This one drapes himself across Mick’s bed, staring disapprovingly at the alcohol on the table. He doesn’t come near Mick, doesn’t have kind words to say.

The professor had told him that these hallucinations are likely a product of his inner thoughts making themselves noticeable, especially since they usually come when he’s drinking. Mick has no doubts that whatever this hallucination decides to say, he won’t like it.

“Drinking? Again?” Len drawls, and Mick tightens his grip on the bottle. 

“Why do you care?” he growls, and Len smirks, eyes cold and sharp. Mick hates his mind for the amount of detail it puts into these things.

“Well,” Len says, drawing out the ‘l’. “I’ve never  _ liked _ the men in my life being heavy drinkers.”

Mick throws an empty beer bottle at him, because it isn’t Len, and it almost feels as if the hallucination is mocking both of them. He vanishes before the bottle can sail through him.

Mick cries.

...

Sara gets in on the third day, and Mick barely restrains himself from snarking something about the Bible.

He’s at the table turning Len’s ring in his fingers, staring off into space, when the door suddenly slides open and Sara storms in, looking furious.

“You think you can make Gideon disobey the captain?” she snaps, sitting down in the other chair and pushing the empty bottles aside so that she can lean her elbows on the table. Her face is stony, furious. Mick tosses back more of his beer.

“Dropping the gentle act?” he asks, and his voice sounds like gravel. More than usual.

“I know you don’t appreciate it,” Sara says shortly, although her face does soften enough to reveal some sympathy. Sara continues, after a moment. “I know you don’t do the touchy feely stuff with anyone but Len, and even  _ him _ I’m not sure about, so I’m going to cut to the chase. You need to get off your ass.”

Mick stares at her, face blank, and she stares back. “I know you’re disappointed about what happened in the lab, but you  _ can’t _ think this is over. There’s no way this all happened just to make a little tiny timequake.  _ Something  _ would have happened - we must just be missing something.”

“Like what?” Mick says dully, before lifting his beer up to his mouth again. Sara scowls. 

“I don’t  _ know,  _ Mick, but you’re the only one who has contact with Len. We need  _ you. _ ”

“He hasn’t been around lately.”

Sara blinks in surprise. “What?”

“Hasn’t visited since we found his old man’s wedding ring. Even then, he was faded.”

Mick waits, waits for her to come to the same conclusion he did: they fucked it up. They screwed up the formula, somehow, and now there was no chance of getting him back. Instead, her expression steels.

“Alright. Just another clue we have to work with.”

Mick blinks, and Sara stands. “Come on,” she says, and there’s a victorious gleam in her eyes like she knows she’s won. “The others are in the lab. We’re ready to crack this thing.”

She gives him a hand and pulls him up, meeting his gaze confidently despite being almost a foot shorter. “We’ll get him back, Mick.”

Mick hates her for the flutter of hope in his chest.

...

Ray, Nate, Sara, and Mick spend two days in the lab, barely getting up to eat, going to bed late, and waking up early. Ray makes himself useful by studying Len’s things while Nate, Sara, and Mick all read history books to see if anything is even  _ mentioned  _ in them, even though Gideon claims she can’t detect any aberrations with Len’s signature. 

Mick can feel himself growing numb the more Sara and Nate discuss theories, or the more things in Len’s parka that Ray figures out how to track. 

“A week,” he says, on the third day. “And then we’re done.” He doesn’t say that it’s because he can barely take this, operating on hope that’s harder and harder to keep from shattering, but their faces say they understand as they nod.

Mick goes to bed early on the fourth day, feeling useless and heartbroken, and instead of finding sleep, he stares at the ceiling and thinks about Len.

What else is new.

He holds the ring, still around his neck, and shuts his eyes, praying for sleep. He’s found himself clutching the ring recently, after the shiv failed to bring Len back to him, and for the first time since Len visited him that one night, it feels like the last true connection he has to his husband. 

Wait.

He sits up in bed and rips the chain off of his neck, lifting the ring to his face, half-expecting it to be glowing in the name of his brand new theory.

If the shiv wasn’t actually the last item - it would explain why Gideon can’t sense it. It isn’t out of time. It’s right where it’s supposed to be.

Mick jumps out of bed, unwilling to let the hope in his chest go, for once making him feel light rather than fragile. He doesn’t bother to change out of his wife beater and sweats, running down the hall and to the lab, where Ray, Nate, and Sara all crowd around a map, talking.

He bursts in, and he can’t be bothered to explain it to them, walking over to the shrine before he can lose his nerve, before doubt and fear keep him from at least trying. He lays the ring on the parka in a weird reenactment of the first time he did this, and time  _ click. _

There’s a sound like a gear finally locking into place, and the power goes out. 

“What--” Sara starts to say, and then there’s the horrifying sensation that they’re falling. “Shit!” Sara bites out, and Mick can hear her start running for the door, before the Waverider’s blasters come back on, and they’re all forced to the ground with the shock of suddenly stopping their descent.

Mick gets up, aching, and the lights flicker back on to reveal Len standing just in front of the shrine, looking shell shocked. Time seems to slow down around him, and he stands there, shaken, for what feels like years before he breaks out of his shock and comes up to Len in two long steps, grabbing his hands and bringing them to his chest. His heart leaps into his throat the minute his skin meets Len’s.

“Mick?” Len says, and he looks shaken as well. His eyes glow brighter than before. “What--”

“I love you,” Mick says, Sara, Ray, and Nate be damned. He lets go of Len’s hand to grab the back of his neck, and he wants to sob at the familiar feeling of short hair against his skin. He drinks in Len’s face, his touch, and his voice cracks as he says, “I didn’t say it when you asked me too.”

A faint look of recognition flits across Len’s face, like he’s remembering something that happened a long time ago, before he glances behind Mick, where he knows the others are clustered, watching. “ _ Len, _ ” Mick says, and he moves his hands to the sides of Len’s face, bringing him in for a kiss. He doesn’t move it further, doesn’t deepen the kiss no matter how much he wants to, because Len doesn’t look like he has a firm grasp on the situation and Mick’s already giving him a lot of touch. It’s still the best feeling Mick’s ever had, because Len melts into him, relaxing, and Mick allows himself to do the same.

They pull apart, and Mick says, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Len says, and he still looks alarmed. His eyes drift from Mick’s lips to his eyes. “I… I died,” he says vaguely, looking at Mick like he might have some explanation.

It sounds detached, like he doesn’t fully understand what he’s saying, and Mick doesn’t know what to do other than pull Len into him, Len’s face falling into his shoulder like it’s second nature. Mick clutches him to his chest like he’d done with the parka, only this feels infinitely better. His heart’s still a little broken, but he can feel the worst damage healing over, becoming scars Len will help him deal with.

“I’m never letting you go again,” he murmurs over Len’s head. “Don’t  _ ever  _ do that again, asshole.”

“Pot, kettle,” Len says, a hint of his drawl coming through. His mouth moving against the bared crook of Mick’s neck has him shivering.

They stand there for a while longer before Len starts to shake, coming out of shock, and Mick releases him from his death grip, examining his face and grabbing his hands again. 

“I  _ died, _ ” Len says again, face pale and gripping Mick’s hands so hard it almost hurts. “I was  _ dead. _ ”

Mick is speechless, for a second, unsure of how to comfort his husband, before Len continues, “Thank  _ God  _ you pulled me out of it.”

They’re going to be okay. A little more scarred, a little sharper around the edges. But they’re going to be  _ okay. _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr (@zaricats) and chat! I hope you liked it!


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